Iain Martin is a political commentator, and a former editor of The Scotsman and former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph. He is the author of Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the men who blew up the British economy, published by Simon & Schuster.. As well as this blog, he writes a column for The Sunday Telegraph. You can read more about Iain by visiting his website

This is not David Cameron's finest hour

It is not a game. The Syrian crisis centres on the murder of hundreds of civilians, including many children. Their gassing last week, in a chemical weapons attack, follows the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in a civil war and the unleashing of a humanitarian catastrophe by a despicable regime. For the question of potential military intervention to be reduced, as it has been at points in the last 24 hours, to a smart alec Westminster game of who is up and who is down is obviously deeply distasteful.

But this – the vulgar measurement of assorted calculations, the testing of leaders under extreme pressure and the study of the rapidly shifting sands of parliamentary opinion – is what noisy democratic politics is like in a crisis when the answers are not obviously clear. From the moment earlier this week that David Cameron recalled Parliament with a view to getting backing for immediate military action, there was always going to be lot of manoeuvring. The alternative, the opposition and everyone else meekly rolling over and doing what the government wants, has got the UK and its military into trouble before, and not that long ago.

It should be remembered that these are not easy decisions and that Cameron is not (despite what his most unforgiving critics say) trigger happy or reckless. He has obviously long wrestled with the question of what to do about President Assad of Syria, believing that the monster must be confronted at some point but staying his hand on the advice of the UK's military leadership on the grounds that British involvement would be highly risky.

But even allowing for the various difficulties which make this far from straightforward, somehow there has been a serious malfunction in the Number 10 and the Foreign Office machine in recent days. Cameron, Foreign Secretary William Hague and their advisers predicated their policy on an assumption that Ed Miliband would definitely fall-in behind the government line and vote for action, meaning an overwhelming majority in the Commons. This always struck me as an odd assumption to make.

Miliband is not naturally a foreign policy hawk and he is on record as being extremely uneasy about the way in which Labour handled Iraq when it was in office. In practical, unseemly terms, Labour also needs the votes of those who deserted Blair over Iraq and went to the Lib Dems in 2005 and 2010. The polls suggest Miliband has a substantial chunk of them back in the Labour column. Why would he jeopardise that by joining the rush to intervene? Indeed, polls suggest that more broadly voters are two to one opposed to the UK getting involved in Syria. There seems to be a huge disconnect between much of the political elite and the wider population, and it would be plain weird if an opposition leader ignored it. He would have to be very sure he had a strong case for defying the voters, which in regards to Syria just isn't there, at least not yet. Miliband backing a rush to war in confused circumstances makes no sense.

Labour's Douglas Alexander sounded uneasy and guarded on Tuesday when interviewed on radio about Labour's response, and yet it was presumed that this was Labour shaping up to do what Cameron wanted. It didn't sound that way. And yet, Miliband's decision to demand the government wait for the verdict of UN weapons inspectors and then have a second vote seems to have come as a total shock to Number 10, which then within hours had to cave in to the Labour leader's demands in dramatic scenes on Wednesday evening.

The combination of Miliband's move, boiling Tory potential rebellion and deep Lib Dem unease, seems to have prompted a sudden realisation that Cameron was heading for a hammering and he had no option other than to retreat.

It is bizarre. Cameron has in so many other respects shown himself rather adept when handling the vagaries of coalition, no matter what you think of the basic concept of government by pact. And yet here he seems to have forgotten that his party does not have a parliamentary majority and proceeded from there to make several other miscalculations, relying first of all on Labour behaving meekly as the Tories always did under Blair in similar circumstances ahead of a war.

Next, the Tory whips either did not do their job in providing a proper assessment of opinion in the Conservative parliamentary party, or they did and their warnings were ignored. Either way, it should have been obvious earlier this week that a significant number of Tory MPs – who are an independent-minded bunch these days – had grave doubts. That seems not to have worried Number 10, which thought Labour would do its duty, rendering Tory rebels irrelevant. Whoops.

Of course, it is not a given that, having backed down, this must end badly for the Tory leader. Many of those who will mock Cameron for his U-turn would have attacked him if he had refused to yield, and it is possible that he will get some credit for being reasonable and being prepared to adjust. But for now, it has left the Prime Minister looking a little ridiculous. With decent intentions he recalled the Commons to vote for immediate military action, and now MPs will instead have a generalised debate today about the question of how horrible Assad is (answer, very horrible indeed). Cameron tried to show strong leadership, and got outflanked.